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Two issues have dominated this offseason. First, and the one most fans are paying attention to, is the number of quality players that remain unsigned. Second is the commissioner office’s attempt to address professional baseball’s slowing pace of play, most startlingly by adding a clock to a game that’s never had one. What everyone is missing is that both those problems are children of one problem that nobody is talking about: zombie franchises.

What is a zombie franchise? A zombie franchise is an organization that seems forever stuck in baseball purgatory. Never quite good enough to contend for a championship, these teams become the homes of what were once called “AAAA” players, but are today usually referred to as “replacement level players.” They’re identified by keeping their major league payroll low, the quality of play only slightly better than a good AAA team and for shipping out their decent players in the continual rebuild. The people who own these teams are not to be blamed for this; after all, like any business they need to turn a profit. The players union isn’t responsible for the situation, either – after all, it’s sole reason for being is to protect the jobs of those men lucky enough to call themselves professional baseball players.

But zombie franchises slow the pace of play down by fielding inferior teams. Seriously, try to watch a game between, say. the Reds and Marlins. You’ll need massive doses of caffeine just to make it to the third inning. Most of the pitchers on these teams would either be toiling in the minor leagues or out of pro ball entirely. The same goes for many of the position players. Either they simply lack the talent to compete with their peers, lack the seasoning that comes with proper time in the minor leagues or were once capable major league players just playing out the string. The result is pitchers who cannot throw quality strikes and hitters who can’t hit quality pitches (or lay off bad ones), fielders who make ridiculous mental errors and teams in general that need tons of in-game coaching just to play nine innings. No wonder the games are not only taking longer, the amount of time between each play is taking longer. Now throw in a lot of time where nothing is happening (after all, what is less exciting than a two out, bases empty 6 pitch walk?), and the commissioner is right to be concerned.

This is also affecting the current free agent and trade markets. Players who were king dogs on their old teams are discovering that they just aren’t good enough to justify the type of money they were led to believe they deserve. Mike Moustakas is a nice player. Lefty bat, some home run power, solid if unspectacular defender. Same goes for his former teammate, Eric Hosmer. JD Martinez? Good hitter, lousy defender, slow as molasses runner. They are all universally regarded as good, but complimentary, players. If your team is only going to win 70 games without them, none of those guys is going to to suddenly turn you into a pennant contender. For a pennant contender, they play positions that aren’t needed. But these guys have heard for two or three years now that they’re “franchise players” in the media, from their agents, from their former teams. So it’s understandable that a Martinez is looking for 6 years at $25 million each. It has to be hard for him to hear from teams now that he isn’t that good.

The same goes for the free agent pitchers. The reason teams loaded up on middle relievers at the beginning of free agency is simple: the starting pitching market isn’t very good. The top two available, Jake Arrieta and Yu Darvish, are good pitchers but hardly great. Neither would be called an “ace” on a contender. Arrieta has been around for 8 years. In that time, he’s posted two very good seasons (the last three seasons ago), two slightly better than average years – and four seasons that wavered between bad and horrendous. As for Darvish, he can strike guys out. But when he isn’t striking out hitters, they’re hitting him and hitting him HARD (see his postseason history). Again, both guys aren’t bad, but neither is worth 7 years and $200 million.

Part of the problem for these guys is they get so many opportunities against zombie franchises, which lets them pad their stats. Darvish got to pitch 22 times against a zombie franchise in 2017, going 8-7 with a 3.49 ERA, and 83 OPS+ allowed, while averaging almost 7 innings per start – good (although not exceptional) stats. He made 9 starts against actual contenders, going 2-5 with a 4.86 ERA and 131 OPS+ allowed. Not surprisingly, he was generally gone before the 6th inning in those games. As for Moustakas, he batted .283/.317/.537 in 347 at bats against zombie franchises, while hitting .248/.291/.489 in 251 at bats against contenders.

If I’m a GM, I’m looking a lot more closely at those numbers against contenders than against the zombie teams. Why? Well, as we saw in the postseason, Darvish is much closer to the 4.86 ERA pitcher in terms of talent than the 3.49 ERA. Moustakas is closer to the .780 OPS talent than a .850 talent. And that’s how I’m going to pay them.

So how does baseball solve this problem? It seems the best way would be to contract the size of the leagues, probably by four teams. We’ve seen for almost two decades now that teams in Florida just do not work. The Marlins and Rays have never drawn fans. Oakland hasn’t been able to for over 30 years. How can baseball honestly say having teams, especially bad teams, in those cities is doing anyone any good? Other teams ownership groups probably need to be looked at closely, those for the New York Mets, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, San Diego and Baltimore. Teams that have not indicated an interest in actually trying to contend for a title, despite being in markets that historically have supported their teams.

This would obviously get tons of pushback. For starters, the players would hate it, because going from 30 to 26 teams would mean 100 fewer jobs for their number. The owners would hate it, because it’s essentially telling people who have been successful in their other endeavors that they’ve failed in the most public of forums.

But, there might be an easier way to address this problem – one that appeases the players and let’s some owners realize nobody’s ego can be greater than the health of the game. Baseball has a de facto salary cap, the “competitive balance tax.” The payroll level at which the tax applies was negotiated in the most recent collective bargaining agreement (for this year, it’s $197 million. Next year, $206 million). The reason this is acting in the same fashion as a hard salary cap is that every dollar over that limit is taxed at increasing amounts, depending on how many years a team has been over the limit – up to 50%. Now, this hurts players who might be targets of the teams that traditionally spend large amounts – the Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, White Sox – because those teams not only don’t think that Todd Frazier or Eduardo Nunez is worth $13 million a year, they especially don’t think paying a Frazier, et al., a 50% premium adds any value to their team.

What the players should have done was bargained for a payroll floor. I think it could be established along the same lines as the competitive balance tax. Require every team to have a payroll that is at least 50% of the tax threshold (for this year, that would be $98.5 million) and for every dollar they are below that lower limit, fine them a sliding scale amount based on how many consecutive years they’ve been below that level. Do it over a three year period: 20% of the difference in the first year, 50% for year two and 100% for years three and on. Now here’s the thing: those “for the good of the game” clauses the commissioner is threatening to use to install a clock are the same ones he can use to install a payroll floor.

Why is this important? This season alone, 10 teams are currently projected to have payrolls below $98.5 million. Only one – Minnesota is expected to be a contender, and they’re less than $2 million below the proposed payroll floor. The other 9 teams are not only pretenders, they’re not even pretending that they’re anything other than pretenders. If you think otherwise, ask yourself who’s a better player, Mike Moustakas or Maikel Franco. Ask yourself if you would rather have Jake Arrieta or Tim Adelman anchoring your rotation. While we’ve established that guys like Moustakas and Arrieta are not the franchise cornerstones worthy of their contract demands, they are infinitely better than some of the players who do have jobs.

So, some of the marginal players currently employed for no reason other than they’re really cheap would be forced out of the game, or back into the minor leagues. Fans in cities that are lamenting their teams dumping quality players because they make too much would have some hope. Pace and quality of play improves, simply by having better players on the field. And the insanity of trying to turn baseball into basketball with wooden clubs ends.

For ownership, it would force a reckoning. Any fanbase can understand a season or two of mediocrity in the event a total rebuild is needed. They’ve looked around baseball and seen the Astros, Cubs, Yankees, Rockies and Diamondbacks do just that and field high-quality teams. What no fanbase should expect is that the owners of their team will continually put subpar talent on the field in the name of controlling costs. Quite frankly, in an industry that shares profits and raked in over $9 billion, there is no excuse for any ownership group not to be able to make a profit with a $98.5 million payroll.

“The Memo” – that 4 page document that’s tied our overlords in Washington into knots for over a week – has finally been released! If you haven’t read it yet, I suggest you you click here and do so. Now.

Forgetting the political implications for a moment, I want to focus on the critical aspect I haven’t heard anyone mention yet: the FISA court’s existence. Think about it for a moment. None of what our nation has been subjected to over the past 20 months would have been possible, if not for a Constitutionally questionable extra-legal entity that was created for the sole purpose of allowing the federal government to spy on American citizens.

Absent the FISA court, the shady dealings of messers Comey, Rosenstein, Ohr, McCabe, et al., would have been presented in open court. Absent the FISA court, Mr. Steele’s questionably sourced, partisan “dossier” would have had to be presented as a verified source in open court – where any judge not asleep would have laughed the warrant application away. Absent the FISA court, Mr. Page and President Trump would have been notified they were the targets of a federal investigation.

That the last administration weaponized the various enforcement arms of the federal government as a political retribution tool has never been in much doubt. That they attempted to ply their retribution campaign in the shadows is also without dispute (think of the damage a weaponized IRS did to dozens of legitimate conservative groups). That some of the leading members of that administration’s Justice Department were utilizing a secret court to engage in a political dirty tricks campaign should not surprise anyone.

We, the people, gave the government that tool 40 years ago. Just like giving a spoiled child a hammer and telling him “No!”, how can we be surprised that the government uses that tool to smash everything in it’s way?

The political fallout from this will be with us for a while, possibly years. I hope that before those ashes are done burning America takes a good, hard look at the entire FISA process and decides to kill it. Any government that aspires to egalitarian principles cannot have secret courts, cannot grant the police authority to spy on it’s citizens, can never allow political actors control over those same police. Oversight, yes – operational control, never. That is the overriding lesson we need to learn from this fiasco.

Today, we see many things in the news and on social media regarding issues surrounding the US DoJ and law enforcement. As Americans, we know the FBI and the Justice Department are two agencies that must always be above reproach. But today, sadly, we see that is not the case.

Anytime there are officials or leadership in those agencies that use their bountiful resources to operate outside their intended use, there must be consequences. Those consequences should be swift and to the maximum penalty allowed by law. The incident needs to be made public, to show accountability to the American people and restore faith in our system. If nothing was done wrong then those individuals are exonerated. This is the crux of the American system.

Every person in America has their own opinion. They have their individual ideals and beliefs. But impartiality is implicit in the duties of those entrusted with enforcing our laws; bias should never interfere with doing the jobs they signed up for in the Justice Department or the FBI. They must never let their personal feelings interfere with the impartiality of the law.

In our modern era, we’ve listened to those responsible for the fair and impartial application of the awesome power of the American legal system describe the need for powers that made us all blanch. And begrudgingly, we’ve granted them powers they requested, including indefinite detentions and secret courts, even as we feared how those powers could be misused by those with less than honorable intent. We did so on the premise that those applying those powers would remain impartial in their application, that retribution for misusing them would be swift and terrible. We put aside our misgivings and placed our trust in the American system.

This is now beyond debate. This should be past partisan arguments. There is no gray area. The law was either followed or it wasn’t. Resources were used appropriately and as designed, or they were abused. As Americans, we deserve to know the answers to these questions. As Americans, it is our responsibility to know the answers to these questions. And as Americans, we should be in agreement that anyone who misused the authority we allowed them thereby violated our trust. Anyone guilty of such malfeasance is indeed guilty of crimes far worse than any other, for they attempted to murder the very republic they swore an oath to defend.

So yes, release the memos. Stop pretending the investigators are above being investigated themselves. Let us see the facts and judge for ourselves. Only in this way can trust in the institutions charged with guarding the American system be restored.

Is it possible that the rank-and-file members of the FBI are loyal to the country and their mission, while their Obama administration era, politically appointed leaders are only loyal to a political movement?

Yes.

Is it possible the Russian government engaged in an influence campaign during the last election, without either directly assisting either campaign, or being assisted by either campaign?

Also yes. And in both cases, more probable than not.

Unfortunately, the American public seems incapable of living with this state of things. The President is such a polarizing figure, and these issues so closely related both to the man and his temperament, that battle lines are being drawn where none should be. If you are a member of the “#Resistance,” that ill-defined cabal of #NeverTrumper conservatives, radical liberals and social justice warriors, then the Mueller investigation and FBI are the archangels of your salvation. If you’re fully aboard the #TrumpTrain, then the Russians are our friends, had no influence on the election and the FBI is staffed by former members of the Keystone Kops, all of whom are on Hillary Clinton’s payroll.

Enough.

First for my friends on the #TrumpTrain: to pretend that Russia wasn’t attempting to influence the 2016 election is the height of naivety. Russia, from the time of the Czars, has never been a true friend of our nation. Russia has always been, and likely will always remain, an autocratic society that innately fears the very things that the United States’ very existence embodies. Russian governments, whether czarist, communist, perestroika or the current oligarchist regimes, have made it a point throughout history to gain influence over the American electoral process. At times, it was overt as hell. Boris Checherin, a Muscovite professor, was employed by Alexander II to identify and support American politicians who would be sympathetic to Russian interests during the early Reconstruction period. Some of you may be familiar with a KGB unsuccessful attempt to funnel campaign funds to Gerald Ford’s 1976 campaign. In 2009, the House of Representatives acknowledged that Dmitri Medvedev’s government had illegally contributed to political action campaigns for both candidates in the 2008 election.

Given that history, why is it outlandish to think Medvedev’s benefactor and mentor, Vladimir Putin, wouldn’t engage in some sort of dirty tricks campaign? It would be more outlandish to think the former KGB spook, whose only allegiance is to a Russian version of Manifest Destiny, hadn’t engaged in a disruption campaign during the Presidential race. Understanding the methods used, and their efficacy, should be a concern of every American. So take the blinders off. Nobody (except for some very dimwitted #resistance members) believes Putin actively threw the election to Donald Trump. If you give the President cover (i.e., so he doesn’t have to be defensive about Russia’s role), you’ll also give him the ability to unleash a proper investigation. That would be a good (and proper) thing.

Now for the #NeverTrumpers: as conservatives, we lamented the politicization of the Department of Justice under Barack Obama and his two Attorneys General, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. To suddenly be shocked that the highest levels of the Department of Justice were operating as a political committee, working to exonerate one candidate of a host of illegal activities while simultaneously creating a false narrative around supposed illegal activities of another, is disingenuous. It was precisely this type of behavior from the DoJ that had us most worried. Further, everything the politicized Obama DoJ had undertaken – from the Fast and Furious gun running fiasco to the early rush to judgement in the Michael Brown “Hands up, don’t shoot” lie, proved to be a political activity, not something actually related to criminal justice. The Obama administration politicized and weaponized all sorts of federal agencies, with a clear intent of crushing any thought of a conservative movement. Agencies with supposedly as diverse missions as the IRS and DEA, the SEC and BLM were all deployed as crusaders against the “evils of the bitter clingers.” Unless you’re willing to accept that the people responsible for creating and implementing those policies suddenly had a change of heart – that the Andrew McCabe’s, Peter Strzok’s, James Comey’s and Sally Yates’ that populated the upper bureaucracy of the Obama administration – decided on November 9, 2016 that duty to country replaced their duty to their Obamaführer, such an outcome wasn’t just a possibility. It is a probability.

It’s perfectly legitimate to call into question the political motivations of a James Comey or Vladimir Putin. It is not legitimate to dismiss concerns about their roles in the tumultuous 2016 campaign over your love or hatred of Donald Trump. Like it or not, he’ll be gone by 2025, at the latest. But the ramifications of these two, symbiotic scandals will resonate in our electoral and justice systems for many more decades after that. Understanding who was trying to put their thumbs on the levers of power and why is far more important than any President.

If the idea that all news is fake somehow shocks you, then you haven’t paid much attention to the world around you for the last 40 years or so. It wasn’t always this way. In the not so distant past, journalism truly was our “fourth estate,” and journalists actually did their bit to keep government more or less honest. This reached it’s peak in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. It was Walter Cronkite who was the only person with enough cache to convince Americans that the war in Vietnam was not going well and American lives were being sacrificed for a feckless foreign policy. It was valiant newspaper editors who risked everything – even imprisonment – to publish the Pentagon Papers. It was intrepid reporters who blew the cover off the Watergate conspiracy. It was a dogged reporter who went against his own political bias to doom Gary Hart’s candidacy.

Sadly, the Gary Hart story was the last hurrah for journalism. Already, political bias was creeping further and further into our evening newscasts. Reporters were feeling their oats and network news executives were feeling the heat to make their divisions profitable. The combination of the two was a slow turning of serious telejournalists into entertainers. David Brinkley gave way to Sam Donaldson. Walter Cronkite was replaced by Dan Rather. Barbara Walters was moved from interviewing monkees for Today to co-anchoring the evening news.

Likewise, newsprint reporters were no longer satisfied with reporting on the dull, mundane day-to-day things. No, now they had to be the news as much as they reported on it. One, John Anderson, even mounted a presidential campaign in 1980. Getting the above-the-fold, banner headline wasn’t just a matter of of industry prestige. It became both the means and the end, the potential springboard to fame and glory. Woodward and Bernstein had done it. Why shouldn’t they?

Of course, that was a generation ago. In the intervening years, the emergence of the internet as a news source not only intensified the drive for eyeballs. Before, the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times might have competed somewhat, but each had it’s own region. No more. Now, each of those papers was not only competing nationally with each other (as was every newspaper and magazine), but they found themselves in virtual warfare with the television networks and he newly emerged 24 hour cable news stations. Stories became more salacious and the telling more over-the-top as each source competed for those same eyeballs.

There had always been reporting errors, of course. Human beings are fallible, and that includes the ones reporting the facts. But whereas before, editors had been dogged in protecting their brands by ensuring accuracy, now they found themselves forced to protect their brands by ensuring they got a story out first, even if it meant having to make corrections later.

But even that bit of true editorial control fell apart in 1998. Newsweek had uncovered and sourced a story about President Clinton and a 21 year old intern, but refused to run it because the editorial board hadn’t been able to talk to the intern herself.

That intern was Monica Lewinsky, and the story was broken by a previously fringe newsman, Matt Drudge, on his internet blog. It wasn’t so much a blog as a news aggregator (as now), but the moment his site announced that bombshell story – which eventually led to the first impeachment of a president in 130 years – news was changed forever. Getting a story out first was no longer a big deal, it was the only thing that mattered. Editorial standards were demolished. It wasn’t long before reporters were openly editorializing on-air. Cable news became less news, and more talking heads arguing about the “issues.” As networks and news organizations began to target their editorial slant to be either pro- or anti-Clinton, the audiences that viewed their content sorted itself likewise. What was once a non-partisan fourth estate had fully migrated into becoming the propaganda arms of the two major political parties.

The lack of any true balance or bias in news reporting for the last 20 years has led to where we are today. Everyone in the news industry is either spinning the news around an editorial cyclotron to extract the content most craved by their target audiences, or just simply creating “infotainment” to reinforce those preconceived notions. It’s how you get CNN declaring the President is about to have a heart attack. It’s how you get MSNBC declaring the President has early-onset Alzheimer’s. It’s how you get Breitbart declaring that Hillary Clinton had a secret stroke.

It is how you get fake news, and how you get news arguing over what qualifies as fake news and what isn’t fake news. Here’s the only thing I know for certain: if Ben Bradlee were around today, here’s what he’d tell current reporters. Go back to reporting the facts, and nothing else. Leave the editorializing for the editorial pages (or in the case of television, the editorial segments). Leave the creative writing for writing novels. The message he would have the suits would likewise be similar. News is about disseminating information, not ratings, not clicks per page – just information.

Until that message gets through, though, here’s what you need to do. Break out of your bubble. If you’re not a reader (and if you are not into reading, then I really need to thank you for reading this!) and getting your news from television, then please, vary your sources. Watch a little of everything. You’ll note the four or five points in each story that CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, etc will agree on. The rest of it? That’s the spin, the emotional tug. The same thing goes for reading newspapers. And if you can’t at least double-source a story, you can bet that it’s the ultimate in fake news: the contrived story.

So, Chelsea Manning is running for Senate in Maryland. Yay us. If you live in Maryland, you have my sympathy.

It’s the greatest swindle in the history of politics, but it’s also the version of the American Dream espoused by liberals. To wit: endanger the lives of your fellow servicemen, get convicted of treason, openly declare your particular mental illness, become a cause celebré, get pardoned by a president desperately seeking attention from his fellow liberals. Then get the government (read: American taxpayers) to pay for unneeded medical procedures so you can further your dubious celebrity and finally, cash in on that celebrity to become much wealthier than someone who actually works for a living.

As for the candidacy itself, it’s beyond a longshot. I probably have a better chance of winning the Democratic primary in Maryland. First off, as she’s still on active duty, she can’t be seated even if she wins. The reason she’s still on active duty (albeit on extended leave) is because the United States Army wants to dishonorably discharge her, but her lawyers are in court fighting that. They’re pointing to that politically motivated pardon as their excuse – which, of course, is the only reason she’s even allowed to run. Anyway, forget the rest of the controversy – not even many liberals are going to vote for a dishonorably discharged traitor.

So why run a futile campaign? Of course, she’ll run out a litany of reasons. Her first campaign ad is mix of Orwellian dystopia and Edward Snowden conspiracies, with a few LGBT themes mixed in. As a message, about the only ones who might buy into it are a few ANTIFA troglodyte types, and those people are not only a very small minority, they’re also the least likely people to vote. After all, blowing stuff up and rioting on George Soros’ dime is hell of a lot more fun.

But what do you need to run a campaign, even a bad campaign that has less chance of succeeding than I do of finding a cure for cancer? M-O-N-E-Y.

Let’s do some math here. Let’s say only 1% of voting age Americans would support a Chelsea Manning candidacy. That’s still around 2.2 million people. Now, let’s say only 10% of those people would be willing to donate $10 towards that candidacy. That’s $2.2 million in a campaign warchest. Think that’s a far-fetched number? Look at how much money Bernie Sanders raised in similar small donations during his quixotic run for the presidency two years ago (according to FEC records, he raised over $228 million).

$2.2 million is a lot of money, far more than Manning would probably ever spend on her campaign. It’s also small potatoes when compared to the sums the actual contenders will raise for the 2018 Maryland Democratic primary. But, what that level of fundraising would do is enable to live Manning to live very comfortably as a permanent gadfly candidate, similar to what Jill Stein has been doing for a decade now. And she won’t have to settle for ridiculous bids for the Senate, after all, she can use those campaign funds to campaign for governor and even president, a truly permanent gadfly candidate with no chance of ever winning anything, and therefore, no chance of ever having to actually work. Like I said, it’s the ultimate liberal dream: get rich while not doing anything.

But how to raise that money? Well, you have to target those people most likely to contribute to your swindle. Who are they? Predominantly young (mostly under 25), all extremely liberal, not very tuned in to television or newspapers. But they are very tuned in to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.

Guess where the Manning campaign ad is running? On Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Guess how many views it has on YouTube? About 100,000 already, and over 1,000 likes. Cha–ching!

My daddy always told me that only fools complain without having a solution. Ok, he used more colorful language – after all, he was a Navy man. But this is the PC version of some rather sage advice.

I mention this since day before yesterday I wrote a bit about my frustration (and based on the responses I’ve read, yours as well) with Congress’ unwillingness to actually do anything about immigration, or DACA, or the budget, or pretty much anything else. But I’m following my daddy’s advice. Now, you can say I’m as mad as a hatter. In fact, I’m pretty sure some (if not all) of you will think so by the time we get to the end of this. Then again, if you’re following me here (or on Twitter or Facebook) you probably already think I have a screw or two loose, so what have I got to lose?

First up, these are all separate issues. Stop the grandstanding. Please. The fate of illegal aliens brought here as children is not related to how much we pay our servicemen. How many people we let in (and how we decide who those people are) has nothing to do with kids brought here when they belonged somewhere else. Trust me on this. How many people are employed by the EPA (or even if there should be an EPA) is a completely different discussion from what to do about the roughly 8 million illegal aliens who wouldn’t be covered by some sort of “DACA fix.”

So, do the simple stuff. The House passed all twelve of the appropriations bills for this fiscal year last September. Pass those out of the Senate. That is entirely up to Democrats. If they ended their charade now, they could pass the current CR tonight, then spend the next month debating those appropriations bills and where there are differences with the House bills, go to conference to hammer them out. That is the “regular order” which liberals spent all last summer demanding the Congress return to, but have conveniently forgotten about now that they want to execute “leverage.” Have I mentioned recently what a bunch of hypocrites politicians are?

Second, stop pretending Congress can only work on one issue at a time. Or, if there are congresscritters who can only tackle one problem at a time, they need to retire immediately. Think about your job. How long would you be employed if you couldn’t do more than one thing a month? Oh, you would be looking for another job? Then why haven’t your fired your representative?

Of course Congress can address multiple issues at once. So while debating the appropriations bills, there is nothing stopping them from beginning real work on all those other issues.

And here’s my proposals around each of them.

The DACA program ends on March 5. So address that first. My position hasn’t changed since the President first announced he was ending the highly illegal program. Grant those who’ve applied to the program permanent residency. Allow those who have reached adulthood and lived here for at least ten years, without incurring a felony charge, to apply for citizenship immediately. Otherwise, it’s the same restrictions as for any other alien resident. See, that was simple.

Next, all other illegal aliens (or undocumented migrants, or whatever the term du jour happens to be): they gotta go. Again, my position hasn’t changed since I first wrote about this 4 1/2 years ago. And yes, proper and aggressive enforcement of our immigration laws will get the majority of them to self-deport. Nobody wants to live in a place where they can’t eat.

Our immigration system needs an overhaul for current times. The idea of “diversity visas” and lotteries is not just stupid, but asinine and awkward. For my less prurient readers, it’s like getting drunk, walking into a whorehouse, grabbing the first available girl, and going off to do your thing without wearing a condom. You’ll spend the rest of your life regretting that decision – and that’s if it didn’t kill you. We obviously can’t take everyone who wants to live here, but that gives us leverage. We can pick and choose, and we should pick the very best candidates. And we should have back-end enforcement of that selection process: anyone granted alien residency in the United States should be required to become a citizen within ten years of arrival – or they should be sent packing.

As an aside to that point – I can’t recall where I read it, or heard it, but there was a legal resident who said she would never become a US citizen, because she was proud to be Jamaican. I have no problem with her being proud to be Jamaican; it’s a beautiful island with some great people. But be a proud Jamaican in Jamaica. If you’re going to live here, then you need to be a proud American. That shouldn’t even be up for discussion. And anyone not willing to give up allegiance to their country of origin should not be granted residency here.

What this means in practical terms is ending the hodge-podge of work and travel visas that currently muck up both our immigration system and allow so many illegal aliens to stay here after their visa expires. No more H-1B or H-3N or any of that other nonsense. You can get a tourist visa to visit, or you can get a residency visa. Period.

Finally, there is the both the federal debt and federal deficit. We aren’t even in February yet, which means there is plenty of time to start working on these problems now, before the appropriations bills for FY2019 have to be ready. Before Congress gets to work on them this time, I would have them ask themselves one thing: if 40% of what the federal government does is “non-essential,” why is the federal government doing those things? Think about it. Our budget deficit is about $600 billion, on around $4.2 trillion of spending. A little math says the recently passed tax bill, assuming no increased revenues from economic growth, will add $180 billion to that deficit. A little more math says reducing federal spending by 40% would yield around a $900 billion surplus. That won’t get rid of the nearly $21 trillion federal debt, but it sure will put a serious dent in it.

Okay, that’s a lot for now, I realize. This ending the partisan idiocy that grips Capital Hill is enough to send your head spinning, but the solutions aren’t that hard. They certainly aren’t as hard as the heads of our congresscritters. But that’s where it’s up to you. If they won’t do the job, then it’s time to fire them all.

It looks as though (once again), the federal government is about to “shut down.” But what does that mean, exactly?

We’ve been down this road before, and quite a few times. What a government shutdown actually means is the roughly 40% of the federal government that is deemed “non-essential services” will cease functions until the latest hissy fit ends. Here’s a brief list of things that won’t be affected:

The military

Border patrol

Air traffic control

Social Security payments

Most operations of the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc

Tax collections

So, if Congress is going to shut down those non-essential services but the essential functions of governance continue, then I hope it’s a long shutdown. Not a few days or even a month. No, let’s make it a go right through the end of the fiscal year in September.

Why? Simply put, after seven months of realizing that non-essential services are just that – not essential – we can finally start wresting control of the budget back from the bureaucrats. Once Americans recognize that they’ve been hoodwinked for generations into supporting things nobody really needs, they won’t be anxious to start those operations up again.

So, yes. Let’s have us a shutdown. But this time – let’s leave it shut down permanently.

I get plenty of people asking me why, if I’m as non-partisan as I claim, do I spend so much time bashing Democrats.

That’s probably the easiest question to answer I can imagine. This is why:

So is this:

And of course, who can forget this:

Folks, Republicans are hypocrites. They’re liars. They have no moral compass, except the one that polls best in October of an election year. They would sell their own mother to the highest campaign donor, if that’s what it took.

So, yes, of course I’m going to drop as many bombs on them as I can. I have a faint hope Republicans can be reformed. Their sins are those of character, not utter foolishness. But Democrats? As long as their party is obsessed with trying to justify 37 genders and insisting everyone not named “Kamala Harris” is a racist rapist, they’re beyond hope.

Well, THERE’S a headline I never thought I would see, much less write.

Unless you’ve been living on Mars for the past week, you might be confused by this topic. It certainly seems a great number of people who should know better – our politicians, our press and our pundits – are confounded, similarly to how a dog might wonder what his master is up to by having a bone yanked away just as he’s about to take a bite.

So a quick refresher course might be in order, both for those recently arrived from outer space and us more earthbound types.

On January 9, during what became an impromptu, hour-long televised bipartisan meeting on immigration matters in the Cabinet Room, the basic framework for granting amnesty to the roughly 800,000 “Dreamers” seemed agreed to. In exchange for amnesty, Democrats would agree to a $1.8 billion down payment on border security measures, which presumably would go towards further development of the border wall. Hammering out the long overdue overhaul to America’s immigration system would be fast-tracked after the budget was passed.

But in typical Washington fashion, nobody could long stand the positive vibes. Liberals immediately decried the border wall, Trumpkins decried the amnesty. And so…

On January 11, a new “Gang of Six’ (apparently, the old “Gang of Eight” atrophied in the bright sunlight the last time Congress attempted to tackle immigration) struck a deal that they simply had to know was going to be a non-starter with anyone politically left of California. In exchange for amnesty not only for “Dreamers,” but their extended families, granting permanent residency to everyone here under Temporary Protected Status and a couple thousand fewer lottery visas, the government would get $1.8 billion in border security measures.

The White House almost immediately announced their displeasure with essentially granting fully legal status to over 4 million illegal aliens. Which brings us to…

Can you say “verpiss dich?” No? How about “shithole” (or “shithouse,” depending on who’s interpretation of events you choose to believe)?

That evening, during a meeting with the Gang of Six and a few others, the President made his position clear: no more unfettered immigration from shithole (or shithouse) countries, which he loosely defined as being Haiti, El Salvador, and pretty much all of Africa. But not Norway.

And so, for four days now, any discussion of doing the actual work required of this Congress and the Executive branch – little things, like passing spending plans for the federal government and actually passing a realistic immigration plan and doing something about border security and doing something about entitlements and…

You get the picture? Instead of focusing on the real business of governance, we’re distracted by discussions of the President’s racial animus. (For the zillionth time, he isn’t a racist – but he is, as we all are, a prejudiced shithole. Deal with it.) And here’s the part that drives people like me nuts: any substantive discussion regarding immigration is immediately tinged with calls of “racism” by those opposed to anything other than fully open borders. All because the President uttered a rather crass epithet in describing a rather larger segment of the world.

Here’s what should be beyond dispute: there are large swaths of the globe in Africa, Asia, Central and South America that are, in the common vernacular, either outhouses or the holes located at the bottom of an outhouse. There isn’t one sane person who would describe Haiti, Gabon, Rwanda or Chad as a prime tourist destination. Nobody except a Jack Nicholson character would characterize Thailand, Libya, El Salvador or Venezuela as the kind of place where you would want to raise your kids (it’s a great neighborhood, Mr. Nicholson – on a good day, you can get three hours of electricity, the corner market will have toilet paper and the drug gangs will only take half your belongings!).

Here’s what should also be beyond dispute: not everyone from a basket case nation is themselves a basket case. Yes, the predominant population in those places isn’t

****TRIGGER WARNING****

(the following statement will be too true for some of you)

what we want as new Americans. After all, if they were their countries wouldn’t be basket case outhouses. But some of those people are the sorts of folks we do want to come here, and those should be the ones we allow in.

****TRIGGER WARNING CANCELLED****

Merit has nothing to do with nation of origin or skin color. Conversely,

****TRIGG… oh, screw it

barring someone from, say, Haiti likewise has nothing to do with skin color, either. But the President’s remarks, which were in response to the asinine idea that the “temporary” in TPS now means the same thing as permanent in non-Washington speak, have been twisted, misconstrued, massaged and rebranded by both sides of the identity politics war into competing clarion calls.

That’s what all the teeth gnashing , thumb sucking and 140 character diatribes of the past four days have left us with. If you happen to agree with the President’s position that maybe, just maybe, a system that right now says if your homeland, which wasn’t in particularly great shape to begin with, get whacked with a hurricane, you get to stay here indefinitely, is off-kilter, you’re branded a racist. If you sort of wandered over the border, or maybe overstayed a tourist visa, a couple of decades ago, no biggie – you get to stay, too (why should our laws apply to you? You meant well)! If you think that a system that says we’re going to have immigration based on a lottery, where winning not only means you get to set up house here, but you can bring your mother, your brother, your great uncle and your second cousin thrice removed while we deny a software engineer residency is just a wee bit out of whack, you’re a racist. If you happen to think the systems in Canada, India, Japan, South Korea, etc, and so forth (all, by the way, “enlightened liberal” democratic societies) might be something we could learn from, you’re obviously a racist. Because those damned Canucks are totally racist, eh?

So, how do we get out of this miasma of non-productivity? I’d suggest the first thing to do would be for both sides to ditch to identity politics and identity politicians, pundits, journalists and all the rest of that diaspora. Al Sharpton, you gotta go. Same for you, Sean Hannity. Because so help me, if I hear one more idiot yell “I’m a proud black man!’ or type in all caps “I’M PROUD TO BE WHITE”, I just might lose it.

Speaking of identity politicians, if I see one more disingenuous congresscritter emerge from a private meeting fuming about language, I might just have to point them to their own past statements (bunch of hypocrites, the lot of ’em). Besides, ever listen to the tapes from the Kennedy, Johnson or Nixon Oval Offices? You would hear language that would make a Parris Island Drill Instructor blush. And Trumplicans don’t get a pass on this, either. Saying the President didn’t utter one epithet because he used a different cuss word is equally disingenuous. It was pure huckstering on both sides, and it had the desired effect. The status quo will remain for at least two more years. Congratulations! Washington has once again succeeded at doing the one thing it’s proven incredibly efficient at: creating new problems while ignoring the existing ones. It’s back to the ramparts, you plebes – fight the good fight and if the country burns in the meantime…well, at least I won reelection.